Saturday, August 07, 2004

Nader 2004 > Nader 2000

The best kept secret of this presidential election year is that Ralph Nader has been polling better in 2004 than 2000, despite the relentless barrage of attacks by Anybody But Nader intellectuals. First, take a look at Gallup's trendlines in 2000:

Tood Chretien, the Northern California Field Coordinator for Nader/Camejo 2004, explains the gap between decreasing support for Nader among intellectuals and increasing support for him among all registered and likely voters between 2000 and 2004:

There is an inverse relationship between youth, poverty and oppression on the one hand and hostility to Nader on the other. Petitioners encountered the MOST hostility in more middle-class areas, where indignant liberal yuppies felt perfectly comfortable yelling all sorts of vulgar insults. In neighborhoods that were poorer, more working class and more multi-racial, petitioners got a much better reception. Same goes for younger voters. And in the working class areas, even those who did not want to sign the petitions tended to be more respectful and support our right to speak our minds.

These are generalizations. There are many better off progressive people who support Nader and there are many young, poor and people of color who do not. But the trend is unmistakable.

What can we learn from these facts?

The Democratic Party survives off the passivity and demoralization of the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working class.

The Democrats do nothing to challenge the indifference of the poorest people and youth in the United States to the outcomes of elections, because they benefit from it. The biggest threat to the Democratic Party's status as an alternating ruling party is an active, confident and organized working class. The submission of most of the left in the United States to the mantra of "Anybody But Bush" is of enormous importance to maintaining this subjugation.

If we held an election tomorrow in which everyone (whether or not they are registered to vote) voted on Bush's, Kerry's and Nader's platforms, Nader would get 20% or 30% of the vote, if not more. Would that cost Kerry the election? Probably, but it would also terrify Bush and paralyze the main stream parties' capacity to march lock-step down the road of war, prisons and corporate power.

Of course, there WON'T be that kind of election this year. Why not? Because the Democrats and the corporate media are doing their best to stamp out the challenge from Nader. They are determined to destroy any left-wing opposition today and effectively cripple it for the future. Unfortunately, they have enlisted many progressive political people in this campaign. If they succeed in driving Nader/Camejo from the field, then the likelihood of an election like that EVER taking place will be set back tremendously. . . .

The Democrats will no doubt keep Nader/Camejo off the ballot in some states, using the Florida tactics pioneered by Jeb Bush in 2000. Before those progressives who oppose Nader's campaign get too giddy about their new found friends in the VIP boxes of the Democratic Convention, they ought to consider who they are really muzzling.

Nader is famous enough so that his voice will be heard in the media. The thousands of young and Black and Latino and working class voters who signed Nader's petitions in California are not so fortunate. Their voices will be silenced if Nader is not on the ballot.

They will not have the opportunity to vote for a candidate who represents the issues that matter most to them: bringing the troops home, national health care, drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, gay marriage, equal pay for women, raising taxes on the wealthy, and on and on. They will not have the right to vote for the first presidential candidate of Arab descent, nor the first Latino vice presidential candidate. Their civil rights are being trampled on by the Democrats in Oregon, Illinois, and California, just as their rights were assaulted by the Republicans in Florida. ("The Dem Plot Against Nader: Florida Comes to California," CounterPunch, August 5, 2004)

Indeed, the Anybody But Nader Democrats would keep Nader rather than Bush off the ballots, against the interests of the working class, and, as a matter of fact, they have even changed election laws and regulations to help Bush get on the ballots in nine states: "Illinois fixed a glitch in its election law . . . to ensure President Bush appears on the state's Nov. 2 ballots. The relatively late dates of this year's Republican Party convention, running Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, meant that Bush would not be the official nominee until after an Aug. 30 deadline set in state law. The ballot qualification issue arose in nine states, with Illinois the last to take care of it. The amendment allows candidates onto the ballot who are nominated after the deadline" (Reuters, "Illinois Fixes Glitch to Keep Bush's Spot on Ballot," July 8, 2004); the Democrats' favor gives Bush a month's edge over Kerry in campaign finance: "Under federal law, each major-party nominee will receive a check for $74.69 million from the U.S. Treasury to finance the general election campaign. Receipt of the money is triggered by formal acceptance of the nomination, and after that no money raised for the primaries can be used on behalf of each nominee's general election campaign" (Dan Balz and Thomas B. Edsall, "Kerry Ponders Delay in Party Nod: Period Between Conventions Gives Bush Funding Edge," Washington Post, May 22, 2004, A1).

Some of the Anybody But Nader intellectuals protest that their support for the Democratic Party is temporary. Are they telling the truth or expressing a bad faith? A good litmus test is whether they support or oppose the Democratic operatives' machinations to keep Nader off the ballots.

Editor of Ballot Access News, [Richard] Winger said . . . : "Since the 1890s, when ballot access laws first came into existence in the U.S., both major parties have used the ballot access laws for their own partisan advantage. . . . This year, though, partisan use of the ballot access procedures for independent candidates has been unusually active. Democrats have challenged Ralph Nader's signatures successfully in Arizona, and a Democratic challenge of Nader's petition in Illinois will probably succeed. Republicans in Michigan have completed an independent candidate petition for Nader. . . . Republican efforts to get Nader on the ballot may be selfish and hypocritical, but these efforts do enhance the ability of voters to vote freely for the candidate of their choice. On the other hand, Democratic efforts to keep Nader's name off the ballot do interfere with voting rights."

Winger added: "The Democratic Party has tried to prevent voters from voting for certain minor party and independent presidential candidates in the past. [Progressive Party candidate and former vice president] Henry Wallace was kept off the Illinois and Oklahoma ballots in 1948 through Democratic Party efforts. Eugene McCarthy was kept off the New York ballot in 1976 by a Democratic Party challenge, and the Democratic National Committee intervened in legal proceedings in 1980 to try to keep John Anderson off the Massachusetts and North Carolina ballots. . . . This type of activity is virtually unknown in other advanced democracies. In Canada, the Liberal Party might be helped if it could keep the New Democratic Party off the ballot. And in Great Britain, the Labor Party might similarly be advantaged if it could keep the Liberal Democratic Party off the ballot. But that doesn't happen in those countries; it would be considered unspeakably unethical. Ballot access in both Canada and Great Britain is very easy. Candidates for House of Commons in Britain only need 10 signatures plus a filing fee, and Canada is similar." (Institute for Public Accuracy, "Ballot Access: Restriction on Democracy?" July 20, 2004)

Those who aid and abet the Democratic Party's crime of excluding Nader from the ballots and disenfranchising working-class voters on the left are committing the same crime as those who aid and abet the disenfranchisement of working-class voters -- especially working-class Black voters -- through criminal disenfranchisement laws. After all, voting rights mean nothing if voters are allowed to vote for only the candidates pre-approved by the power elite.